23.4612, Books: Sensorimotor Cognition and Natural Language Syntax: Knott
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LINGUIST List: Vol-23-4612. Sun Nov 04 2012. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 23.4612, Books: Sensorimotor Cognition and Natural Language Syntax: Knott
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Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2012 18:48:25
From: David Weininger [dgw at mit.edu]
Subject: Sensorimotor Cognition and Natural Language Syntax: Knott
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Title: Sensorimotor Cognition and Natural Language Syntax
Publication Year: 2012
Publisher: MIT Press
http://mitpress.mit.edu/
Book URL: http://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262017763
Author: Alastair Knott
Hardback: ISBN: 9780262017763 Pages: 404 Price: U.S. $ 45
Abstract:
How is the information we gather from the world through our sensory and motor apparatus converted into language? It is obvious that there is an interface between language and sensorimotor cognition because we can talk about what we see and do. In this book, Alistair Knott argues that this interface is more direct than commonly assumed. He proposes that the syntax of a concrete sentence--a sentence that reports a direct sensorimotor experience--closely reflects the sensorimotor processes involved in the experience. In fact, he argues, the syntax of the sentence can be interpreted as a description of these sensorimotor processes.
Knott focuses on a simple concrete episode: a man grabbing a cup. He presents detailed models of the sensorimotor processes involved in experiencing this episode (drawing on research in psychology and neuroscience) and of the syntactic structure of the transitive sentence reporting the episode (drawing on Chomskyan Minimalist syntactic theory). He proposes that these two independently motivated models are closely linked--that the logical form of the sentence can be given a detailed sensorimotor characterization and that, more generally, many of the syntactic principles understood in Minimalism as encoding innate linguistic knowledge are actually sensorimotor in origin.
Knott's sensorimotor reinterpretation of Chomsky opens the way for a psychological account of sentence processing that is compatible with a Chomskyan account of syntactic universals, suggesting a way to reconcile Chomsky's theory of syntax with the empiricist models of language often viewed as Mimimalism's competitors.
Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science
Linguistic Theories
Syntax
Written In: English (eng)
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